Chapter 16
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
The unease that traveled down his spine had Mungo standing suddenly.
“What?” Bud asked, lowering her mug back to the table. “You look like you’re at the altar, and it’s Tabitha Varney standing next to you.”
“That’s a good one,” Mr. Dumple said.
“Excuse me,” Mungo said. “Something’s not right.”
“What’s not right? You sound like a Nightingale. That’s the kind of thing they say.”
Mungo ignored Bud and left the kitchen, making his way to the front door.
“What?” Alex asked. He was seated on the bottom step with Chester. In his hand was a biscuit that he was clearly about to feed to the dog.
“Something isn’t right.”
“Really?” Alex handed the biscuit to Chester, who sprinted off with his treasure. “I don’t sense anything. Mind you, there is that child forever warbling ‘Sing A Song Of Sixpence’ and the scent of a crusty old man who stinks of tobacco. Nothing else seems to be getting through however.”
“Where is everyone?”
“Not here. Just me, you, Bud, and Mr. Dumple,” Alex said.
Mungo felt the tension slide into panic. “Surely you feel it?”
Alex regained his feet, face now serious, which it never was. “No, nothing.”
Mungo grabbed his thick jacket and slid his arms into the sleeves. Alex did the same with his own.
“The children are walking.” Mungo opened the door. “It must be them.”
“Have you felt like this before? I don’t remember you ever telling us about things you sensed.” Alex kept pace with him as he stepped outside. “Are you unwell, Mungo?”
“No, I’m not unwell,” he snapped.
He stepped onto the street and looked around. He saw the rotunda, which had only a few people in it, none of them his people. Mungo started toward the entrance to Crabbett Close with Alex on his heels.
“What are you feeling?”
“Unease.”
“That’s odd for you.”
“I feel unease around you lot all the time—it just doesn’t come on like this,” Mungo said, his eyes going from left to right as he wondered what had sparked the feeling inside him.
“And yet we’re so well-behaved,” Alex said.
Mungo ignored that idiotic statement. He was running by the time he reached the Crabbett Close entrance.
“Which way?”
“How am I to know that?”
Alex shrugged. “You’re the one who has a problem, not me.”
Left.
Mungo headed toward the three shops, one of which was the bakery that his family spent a lot of time in, and even more now that it was run by the residents.
There was Nitpicks, which he hated, as walking in there made him feel large and clumsy.
Then there was Nicholson’s. Something made him stop by the alley that ran behind it.
A man stood at the end, near the rear of the shop.
“What?” Alex asked.
“That man looks menacing.”
Alex looked at the man and then at Mungo. “So do you.”
“He’s loitering.”
“Or standing outside taking shelter from the ice-cold weather,” Alex said, blowing into his hands.
“I didn’t ask you to come.”
“You’ve never said that you have a feeling something is off before, so there is no way I’m not going to accompany you.”
Mungo grunted and then moved to the entrance of Nicholson’s Book Shop. “I’m going inside.”
“I’ll just check Appleblossoms Bakers, then.”
Mungo shot Alex a look.
“What? There might be trouble in there.”
They both knew it was the food that drew Alex, not possible trouble.
Mungo entered the bookshop through the narrow wood-framed door painted a respectable navy blue. A tiny brass bell chimed above it—a familiar delicate sound utterly at odds with the tightness sitting in the center of his chest.
Why am I feeling like this?
Something was tugging at him, sharp and insistent, but what?
The familiar scent hit him first—ink, paper, and something slightly musty that spoke of worn pages and well-loved volumes.
It mingled with whatever polish had been rubbed onto the shelves.
Mungo had always noted that the air felt still in a bookshop, as if people didn’t dare move or speak too loudly in such a place and upset the order of it.
He nodded to George Nicholson’s sister, who was behind the counter. She was a quiet woman, always dressed in pale colors, who constantly had a calm smile on her face. She’d taken over running the place after her brother had died.
“Afternoon, Mr. Fraser,” she said softly.
He nodded before moving deeper inside.
The room stretched long and narrow, warmed by a small iron stove positioned in the corner.
Its heat did little to cut through the rest of the shop’s persistent chill.
Books climbed the walls—some crooked, some straight, some so ancient they looked as though they might crumble if touched.
A few patrons wandered between the aisles, murmuring, turning pages, and then moving on.
It had changed a great deal since George’s death. The vase of tiny dried flowers on the counter, for one, and the sweep of white curtain tied with a rose sash in the window, for another.
Mungo wasn’t a man given to superstition, but it felt as though something was about to happen. Was one of the Nightingales in danger?
What the hell is wrong with me?
He scanned the shop, wondering if his unease came from something or someone in here. Mungo saw the top of a pale gray bonnet and knew immediately whom it belonged to.
His stomach tightened. Had he come here because of her, or was it something else?
Miss Downing had her head bowed, all her focus on the open book in her hands.
A governess in her sensible uniform, doing something perfectly respectable in a perfectly respectable place shouldn’t unsettle him, and yet this woman just had to be near, and he was exactly that. Eliza Downing was becoming a problem, and he had no idea what to do about her.
He told himself to turn around.
I should leave.
But his damned boots kept carrying him forward.
The scent of old paper deepened as he neared her aisle, where it mixed with something faintly floral from her—lavender water, perhaps, or rose. Something delicate that was always in the air when Eliza Downing was near.
He watched one of her hands rise, and then her gloved fingers ran across her cheek.
She was weeping.
A jolt of fear shot through him. Was she sick? Had someone hurt her?
Walk out of here now. Turn around. You don’t deal with tears, you idiot.
But instead he stepped to her side.
“Why are you crying?”
She jolted upright, startled, and lifted her face to him.
The devastation in her eyes hit him like a fist. His chest burned, seeing her pain. What he didn’t understand was why. This kind of reaction was for his family, the Nightingales and those wed to them, not a stranger.
Mungo dug through his pocket, searching for the handkerchief his mother used to always insist he carry, and he’d never forgot because of her. “No man should ever be without one,” she’d said a thousand times.
He held out the crumpled but clean cloth.
“Th-thank you.” Her voice cracked with emotion.
Their fingers didn’t touch. Yet the moment she took the handkerchief, a ripple of sensation shot up his arm.
What the hell is wrong with me?
He snatched his hand back and curled it into a fist behind him.
“Why is that book making you weep?” he asked, forcing a gruffness into his tone that anyone who knew him was used to.
Women’s tears made him feel like he was wading through a bog in a thunderstorm, neck-deep, with rain pounding him senseless.
Vulnerable. Exposed. Unable to punch his way out of anything.
“I—I…. My father used to read this book to me.”
The words were whispered and thick with grief. They deepened the ache in his chest.
“Buy it, then.”
Her shoulders straightened as she looked at him. The eyes that were red from crying were suddenly fierce. Angry.
He preferred that look to the one he’d seen when he’d first spoken to her.
“I don’t want to purchase the book,” she snapped, though the huskiness in her voice gave away her earlier tears.
“So why are you weeping over it?”
She wore her usual uniform of a gray dress buttoned to the neck, full skirts sweeping the floor, cuffs buttoned.
A governess’s uniform. Sensible. Restrained.
She had a dark gray coat folded over her arm and a gray knitted scarf looped neatly around her throat.
That bonnet hid her hair, but he’d seen it.
Thick and lush auburn waves that he knew would likely fall down her back when freed.
“Why are you in here?” she demanded instead of answering.
“I’m purchasing a book,” he lied.
The skeptical look she gave him said she saw through his lie.
“Are you questioning my ability to read, Miss Downing?”
She let out a loud huff of disbelief, shockingly unladylike, and it startled an unwanted twitch of amusement in him. Miss Eliza Downing was all that was proper unless she was around him, and Mungo found he liked that.
He shoved that thought down inside himself with the others he didn’t want to examine too closely.
“Is your father still alive?” he asked, ignoring her question entirely.
Her eyes widened a fraction. Personal questions were not his style. In fact, he avoided them with the same dedication most men reserved for avoiding a debutante’s determined mother.
“No,” she whispered after a moment. “He passed many years ago.”
Her fingers tightened around the book she held. A children’s book, he realized now. The sort with bright illustrations and big lettering.
She looked at him, gaze steady now. “Do you not have a memory of your childhood that can upset you because of the feelings associated with it, Mr. Mungo?”
“Mungo,” he corrected sharply. “And no.”
A lie. A bloody great one. He had more memories than he knew what to do with. He spent half his life trying not to think about them. He’d rebuilt himself by burying the past as deep as he could shove it. Digging it up meant weakness, and weakness had no place in the man he’d become.
She searched his face as if she could see everything he was hiding, and damn it if he didn’t feel his toes curl inside his boots.
Very gently, she then placed the book back onto the shelf.
“Good day to you, Mr. Mungo.” Eliza Downing dropped into a curtsey and then walked around him, skirts brushing lightly against his leg, and left the shop without a backward glance.
“Mungo,” he muttered, staring after her like an idiot.
Then, without thinking, because thinking would have stopped him, he reached for the book she’d put back on the shelf and took it to the counter.
George Nicholson’s sister—he really needed to remember her name—wrapped it neatly and then handed it to him. Mungo stuffed it down the back of his trousers, tugging his jacket down over it and buttoning it tightly.
“Whoever you’ve purchased that for,” she said with a soft, knowing smile, “I know they’ll love it.”
He simply nodded. Then, with the weight of the book pressing into his spine, Mungo left the shop with tension still riding him.
Looking up and down the road and not in the direction of Appleblossoms, where Miss Downing would no doubt be, he saw a carriage turning into Crabbett Close. A man sat inside, looking out the window.
The shock of recognition hit Mungo hard. He started moving again as it rolled past.
Surely that wasn’t who he thought it was? It had been many years since they’d seen each other—it couldn’t be, could it?
“Why are we running?” Leo pulled up alongside him. “What’s the emergency?”
“Go away,” Mungo growled. His heart was pounding, and not just from the exercise and cold air he was sucking in.
“Mungo. What the hell is going on?” Leo demanded. “Alex said you’ve been behaving oddly.”
He watched the carriage as it slowed outside number 11. Christ.
“I think my brother is in that carriage.” He pointed at the vehicle.
“You’ve got a brother?”
“I do, aye.” Mungo kept his eyes on the carriage. “I’ve told you about my niece. Where did you think she came from?”
“Oh, right. I forgot about that momentarily,” Leo wheezed from beside him.
“Aren’t you nobles meant to be educated?” Mungo needled the man so he didn’t have to think about what he would do if that really was his brother.
A burst of laughter had them turning to the rotunda, where people were clearly having fun. Mungo thought seriously about heading in that direction instead of straight ahead.
“Insulting me is not distracting me from the fact that your brother has called.”
He slowed to a walk, not eager now to find out if Calder was inside that carriage.
“You make it sound like it’s something I want. Like it’s one of those silly morning calls that usually take place in the afternoon. Such is the stupidity of society and its pointless rules.”
“When did you last see your brother?” Leo asked, cutting through Mungo’s attempts to avoid the fact that the sibling he’d not seen since he’d left Scotland many years ago was likely about to step out of that carriage.
Just then, the door swung wide, and a black boot appeared, followed by a man.
“Well?” Leo demanded.
Mungo ignored him and kept walking to number 11 Crabbett Close just as his brother reached the front door and knocked.
He climbed the steps and stood behind him.
“Hello, Calder.”
His older brother turned, shock evident on the face Mungo had once known as well as his own.